My name is Richard Meisheimer.
Today is October 1, 2010.
I'm interviewing Richard Thomas N. Earp,
E-A-R-P, Jr., by telephone.
His phone number is 717-235-5288.
His address is 787 Lakeside Drive, New Freedom,
Pennsylvania, 17349.
This interview is in support of the National
Pacific War Center for Pacific War Studies for
the Presbyterian Historical Foundation during
World War II.
Tom, I want to thank you for taking time to do
this interview today, and thank you for your
service to our country during World War II.
Now the first thing I'd like to do is read this
agreement with the museum.
When I do this in person, I'll let the man read
it and sign it, and I'm also going to mail you
a copy of it so you'll have it for your records.
But let me read this to you.
It says the National Museum of the Pacific War,
Texas Historical Commission, oral history project.
The purpose of the National Museum of the
Pacific War oral history project is to collect,
preserve, and interpret the stories of World
War II veterans, homegrown experiences, the
life of Fleet Admiral Churchill W. Nimitz, and
the old Nimitz Hotel by means of the tape-recorded
Audio recordings of such interviews become part
of the Center for Pacific War Studies,
the Archives of the National Museum of the
Pacific War,
Texas Historical Commission.
These recordings are made available for historical
and other academic research by scholars
and members of the family of the interviewee.
We, the undersigned, have read or heard the above
and voluntarily offer the National Museum of
the Pacific War
full use of the information contained in audio recordings
and our written texts
of these oral history research interviews.
In view of the scholarly value of this research material,
we hereby assign rights, title, and interest
pertaining to it to the National Museum of the
Pacific War,
Texas Historical Commission.
Is that OK with you?
Sounds OK to me.
OK, good.
Now, the next thing I'd like to do
is get an alternative contact.
We find out that sometimes, several years down
the road,
we try to get it back and contact the veterans who's
moved or something.
Do you have a son or a daughter or someone
we could contact in case we needed to to locate you?
OK, let's see.
I got a daughter.
And they can live in a where?
I don't have any more idea what their address
is, why.
My wife isn't here right now, she knows everything.
Her name's Vinnie, V-I-N-N-I.
V, like in violet.
Vinnie, V-I-N-N-I-E.
Her last name's B-A-R-K.
Okay, now, what is your birth date?
My birth date is November 15, 1923.
And where were you born?
I was born in Covens, Maryland, which is in
Baltimore, Maryland.
Okay. Did you have brothers and sisters?
I had one sister.
Was she involved in war work at all? Yes.
What did she do?
She was a WAC.
Oh, okay. Is she still living? Yeah.
I'd like to interview her. Do you happen to
have her address, her phone number, anything? Nope.
Okay, when your wife gets back, we'll see about
that then. That's fine.
Now she was in World War II, right? Yes.
Yeah, I'd love to interview too many WACs. I'd
like to interview her.
Okay. Now you grew up during the Depression.
How did the Depression affect you and your family?
Well, I guess I was only seven or eight years
old when it started, and my mother and father
were separating right about that time, so we
had a little bit of a tougher time because
My mother was doing all the
post-mother-and-father jobs.
So we jumped from house to house to all over
the family city
because sometimes we had to duck the rent sometimes.
But we got along OK.
Otherwise, we'd always eat.
We didn't get all the welfare, though.
It was a time that I remember real well what we
did and everything, but I didn't really realize
it was hardships. Right.
I heard so many people say they were poor, but
so was everyone else.
Yeah, everybody was the same, so I didn't
notice a difference.
That's right.
So that was-okay.
Now, on December 7, 1941, Japan had taken Pearl Harbor.
Do you recall hearing about that? Yep.
And where were you?
A group of boys decided to drive up to
Cumberland because one of them had just joined
the Air Force.
Oh, okay.
And on the way back from there we heard it on
the radio that we'd been attacked at Pearl Harbor.
And he said, man, it didn't give me much
kindness, I didn't know it did, but that's the first
we heard of it on the way back from Rhode Island.
And what was the reaction when you all heard it?
Well, we just didn't know what to think.
We knew we were going to be the ones that had
to go in it.
Because we were all about the same age, all
about 19, 18,
19 years old.
Yeah, you had turned 18 in November, so. Yeah.
Then when did you finish high school?
I went to the first year of high school.
My grandfather had given me an old car that he had,
and I put it together, and I couldn't bring myself
to go in the doors.
I hooked school so much they told me to resign.
Oh, OK.
So I did in the first year.
So what year was that?
That was 1939 or something like that, 1939 or 40.
It was 1939 or 40. OK.
So what did you do then?
I went to work as a truck driver, a service
dump truck.
Local driver, around locally then, right? OK.
Then when did you go into the service?
I went into service in 1943, in March. OK.
And which branch did you go into?
Went down there to join the Navy,
and they said the Navy right now is full.
You're going to have to take, if you want to go
in the Navy,
you're going to have to go in the Seabees.
I'd never heard of the Seabees.
And he said, if I wear the same uniform and everything,
I just don't go and I don't get shipped to you.
You want to land 90% of the time.
So he said, and they're the same as the Army engineers,
practically the same thing.
That didn't sound too bad, so I said, well,
I'll try that.
He said, either that or you got to go over to
the Marines
the Army or the Coast Guard, and I didn't want
any part of any of them, so I took what
he had, and that's how I got into the Seabees.
Where did you go for your training for that?
Williamsburg, Virginia.
Tell me about the training.
What all did you do?
At the training?
Yes, Sir.
We did the same thing you see in the movies,
where you learn how to do close order drilling,
learned how to take apart the rifles and put
them back together and marched all over Williamsburg
and had to attend classes for this, that, and
the other.
So actually you took infantry training, so to speak.
More or less, yeah.
More of that than anything.
When they sent me, right after I got out of
boot camp, they took me and fifty other guys
and sent us to California.
and put us in Camp Pendleton in the Marine base
and transferred us into the Marine Corps.
I understood, we wondered why we were going in
there and they told us that we were going
in there because the Marine Corps had trouble
recruiting guys to go into the Marine Corps
engineers that were similar to the army
engineers. They needed younger men. We were the
50 of
the youngest in our group. Most of them were
old. At that time they were like 30, 40 years
old and they weren't going to Hoover Dam and
all those places. But they were picking
guys that had truck driving experience and any
kind of experience in trade. So that's
how come they picked the 50 of us. We were all
in our teens yet, 19, 20 years old. So
we went in there and we didn't have anything to
say about it, but we didn't care. And they
just made us take our Navy uniforms and
everything, put them in a sea bag, and they
write my mother's
address on it, our mother's home address on it,
and they took it and sent it home to our mothers.
They gave us new marine uniforms, everything in
the Marine Corps, including their boot camp.
And their boot camp wasn't a whole lot
different than the one we had in the Seaview.
This was about six weeks.
Were your drilling structures pretty rough on you?
The drilling structures were extremely rough on
us because they knew we had come from the Navy.
What were some rough things they did to you?
They just took us on a lot of twenty-mile
marches and most of the other ones didn't
have to go that far.
I see.
And of course you put the gas masks on and all
that stuff in your marches. Yeah.
as hell out there and sweat like crazy under
the gas mask and marching at the same time,
you know.
A. Okay. Then when you finished that boot camp,
what did you do?
J. When did we finish it?
A. What did you do when you finished it?
J. When we finished that, we got shipped over
to Camp Elliott to get to go overseas.
A. Okay.
J. They put us in the 1st Marine Amphibious Corps.
A. Okay.
And they shipped us overseas to-the first place
we went was New Caledonia, to Camp Getche,
which was a Marine camp down there.
Getche was a famous raider, so we were put in
the first raider regiment.
Oh, okay, and did you get any kind of training
for the Raiders then?
And then they did all kinds of training down
there for us, and then they sent us to Guadalcanal,
and we went up to Guadalcanal, the fighting was
over, but the bombing wasn't over yet.
They were still getting bombed.
We were-the actual combat was over.
About when did you arrive in Guadalcanal?
I arrived in there around January of 19-January 1944.
And what all did you do on Guadalcanal?
We trained and trained and trained for the
invasion of the Marianas Islands.
Okay. Now were you still in there in-
At that time we didn't know where it was so we
didn't know where we were going to go there.
We didn't know where the hell we were going.
Now how close were you to Henderson Field when
you were there on Guadalcanal?
Henderson Field?
I don't know how far it was.
But you weren't real close?
I know we drove past it to get on to where we
were from the ship.
What did you live in?
No, I guess it might have been a couple of miles.
What did you live in there on Guadalcanal?
What's that?
What did you live in there on Guadalcanal?
We lived in a tent.
I never lived in anything but a tent after that.
How was the food there?
The food was good.
Were you still considered to be in the engineers?
No, we weren't.
We didn't do anything any different than
anybody else.
Okay, all right now you were were you in the
first marine Raiders still
That's where they transferred us into the
fourth Marines the old China red, okay, anyway,
but the fourth Marines there
Yeah, okay
Okay, and then when that when they got us ready
to go to
when we got ready to get on ships and go to
Marianas Island we went
We were put into the 1st Marine Provisional
Brigade, and that took in the 4th Marines
and the Raider Regiments and the 22nd Marines.
There was a lot of Marines out there then, and
the 22nd Marines had to go to Guadalupe
to get their collars back. They lost them on
December 8th.
The Marines had to go to China to get theirs back.
We didn't know where we were going.
First we went to Saipan and sat there and
watched the invasion of Saipan.
We were in the 1st Marine Provisional Brigade
on the ships.
We watched the invasions from our ship, and we
were more or less there for reserves.
Somebody caught a disease there on a ship
called the Climber, an attack ship.
I can't remember what disease this guy got, but he-
Was it malaria?
No, it wasn't malaria.
Dengue fever?
What was it?
Dengue fever? No.
Okay, Scrub Typhus?
My wife doesn't remember that. Anyway.
Okay, that's fine.
But they got this fever, and it was very catchy.
So they took the whole-everybody in that damn
thing out there,
All the people that were in those ships out
there waiting took us over to the Marshall
Islands and put us off on a little tiny unused island.
We all camped out there while they fumigated
the ships.
After the ships were all fumigated and they
felt they were safe, they put us all back
on them and took us to the evasion of Guam.
The evacuation of Guam, I think, was July 21st, 1944.
And did you go in on the first wave?
No, we went in on about the-I don't know how
many waves, but we didn't go in on the first.
When we went in, we went down to the village,
got to Monmure, as the Higgins boats went
in and let the guys off there on the beach,
they come back with the wounded guys.
When we went on the deck to go on the Higgins
boats, we had to stand there and wait for
a Higgins boat.
They were operating on these guys on the hatch
cover of the ship, there were so many of them,
they were just operating them right out there
in the open.
They had a pile of hands and feet and parts of
guys that they had cut off, they had a
pile there about five feet high, and I kind of
had to stand there and look at that big
pile of stuff.
I thought I was going to get beat, but anyway,
we got down, we went down the ropes and got
in the boat and he takes off for the beach and
the tide had gone down and they couldn't
get across the reef.
I'm just guessing, but I was thinking about the
length of a football field from the beach.
So he drops the guy, he tried several times to
get across the damn reef and it wouldn't go.
So he said, I'm going to have to drop the thing
and let you go from here.
So he dropped the front end and we jumped in
the water and Christ, it was right up to
our nose.
And we were walking in the water and the
Japanese were up on that damn mountain behind there,
I can't remember the name of it.
But they were shooting down into the water
with, they told us they were
shooting anti-aircraft stuff down there.
But I don't know what, I don't have any idea
what it was.
We were struggling along to keep them grounded,
and we were just about, got our heads above
the water, and then the further in we went, we
got more out of the water, but then a marine
tank, one of those tanks that can go in the
water, they're open, I don't know what they
call them, but they, it's an open vehicle with
tracks, but it can run in the water.
There was only a few guys on it, so they pulled
up in there, because we were struggling.
And they dropped us off on the beach.
Is that what they called it, LVT or Amtrak?
Amtrak, Amtrak I think they called it.
I don't know what the name of that thing was,
but it was kind of a, it was open, it didn't
have no
or anything. And it ran in the water and the
land, so they could pull us up in there.
Did it have a ramp in the back? No.
Okay, all right. Closed.
But it was powerful, you know. When they pulled
us up there, you could have gotten that 50
guys in there up there. I don't know how, it
was big.
Yeah, right. Okay.
I don't know what it was.
They could cross the reefs, okay.
So then you got to shore, what happened then?
We got ashore and then we were lost and we
don't know where in the hell our outfit was.
We were on the wrong beach.
We were supposed to be on the ridge, something
or another, and we weren't.
And we had to start walking on the beach with a
whole bunch of us started walking the beach
and crouching down and trying to find where our
people were.
And we finally found them after it seemed like
forever to find them, and they put us
to work right away with a poor man's 75mm, they
were using 75mm cannons.
They were bombarding the hell out of the
Japanese, but they were about a couple hundred yards
from the beach.
So they didn't have a hell of a time to keep
them up with the ammo.
So they put us going to the beach and bringing
the ammo up to them.
So we spent the next five days, I guess it was,
maybe even longer.
Just going back and forth.
And then we'd have to start hauling in.
There was no room for them to operate, so we
had to stay there and throw shells out
of the way so we could put the stuff down.
We heard later that the Japanese thought we had
automatic artillery because I don't know
how they kept from burning up, it just went on
and on and on.
That's where we stayed and probably saved my life.
I didn't have to do nothing but go down to the
beach and get the stuff and go up there
and keep the area clean and wild.
I don't have any idea, man.
Just more or less said you, you, and you, you know.
Okay. Then how long did you haul ammo to there?
I guess for about a week, maybe a little
longer, but I know it was at least a week.
And then what happened?
Then they started, they started, we're starting
now to find where we belong.
People were finding us.
And we finally got back to the company that we
were with.
And they had a place where they had all the
tents already up.
And now the shooting has stopped in that area,
you know?
Except for the camp, which was 75.
And then they moved them one, they moved a
bunch, about four big,
I think they call them 155 millimeter cannons
in there.
And they were shooting all the way up the
island on them suckers.
But we didn't have to do anything, carry
anything for them.
By that time, they were taking it right up the
beach, right off from the beach up there in a
vehicle, you know.
Anyway, we went, then they put us in tents, so
we didn't have to, the shooting had stopped on
the ground,
so we could stay, we had to stay in foxholes
for the first couple weeks.
And then after that we were able to stay above
ground and flight went way up the island.
Then we started, they were trying to get across
these damn rivers and streams and places with vehicles.
And they put me with about half a dozen other
guys with axes and small hammers knocking
the tops and bottoms out of wool drums and they
would just lay them end-to-end across
the stream and they would hog stuff and dump on
it so they could get a road across there
without being up in their neck in water every time.
They did that for a while and finally they
started opening up a pit where they could
dig what they called silica. It was white stone
but they could dig it. It was soft enough
to dig. I hauled that for the rest of the time
until we got a lot of roads around so
they could travel on them, you know, instead of
being a poet up there for years.
From then on, that's what we did was build
roads, and we built that great big northwest
field up there on the north end of the island
for the B-29s.
When the first one of them came in there, I
couldn't believe my eyes, they were so big.
Then we'd go down to the end of the runway
every day and wait for them to take off so
So we could keep working.
Now we were really into strictly construction work.
You know, they had put us back with the
Seabees, and the Seabees were building that
damn airport
up there.
But that was about the size of it, I guess.
Now when you were going into the beach were the
Japanese shelling you all yeah, okay
Up on the hill that that beach was right right
in front of that beach
When starting going uphill?
I don't know. I can't remember the name of the
same thing. They called it a map, but it wasn't
a map
It was a high, real high hill. It ain't what we
would call a mountain, but they called
it a mountain something. They were firing from
up there down into the beach and everywhere.
And our 75s that we were feeding were shooting
the hell out of them up on that hill and everywhere
they were. Nighttime, the first night we were
there, the damn Japanese charged us and tried
to throw us off the beach. They had a night
attack. They were all souped up with Saki
and every other damn thing. And they have these
ships and they'd call in there and the
ship would send up a shell that would light up
everything like daytime. And here they
are. Some bitches were coming up out of the
woodwork over there. Marines would shoot them
down with everything they could do, you know.
What weapon did you have?
What I had was a carbine, a 30-caliber carbine.
Was that pretty effective?
Yeah, it was a damn good little rifle.
Yeah, right on the beach, right at the beach.
They were screaming like crazy and they were
getting shot down as fast as they stood up on us.
Not one, not one of them around me was hit.
What other combat were you involved in there?
We were involved in that on the beach and of
course they were trying to find these,
the Japanese had cannons up on the other end
and they were trying to find these guys.
Yeah, okay.
And that's nerve wracking.
We'd have to dive in a damn foxhole that half
the time was half full of water, and you could
hear them.
They were looking for them like a grid.
They would shoot one, two, three, four, and
each one of them was maybe twenty yards ahead
of the other one or something.
It sounded like a giant walking towards you.
It would just be boom, boom, boom, boom, and
then they would move over a little bit.
They did that night and day.
Ours were doing the same thing to them.
That damn sergeant, our foxhole was right in
front of him.
So I could hear that sergeant and we could hear
him screaming to the guys.
We would give them the coordinates of what they
were supposed to do and he would scream at them.
The Japanese were shooting at you and you were
shooting at them?
They had their cannons shooting back at them,
trying to find them, but they never did.
They never did land anything right on them.
They were everywhere, but when you were there
waiting, you could hear them coming, you know,
that was nerve-wracking.
So that's why I always have haystacks and thunderstorms.
How about mortar fire? Were you under much
mortar fire?
Well, I never was able to tell much difference
between mortar fire and the other.
Oh, okay.
I could tell their machines on those, they were
really fast and rapid.
Yeah, okay.
I could tell when they were shooting themselves.
And ours were slow but louder, you know.
Yeah, right.
And then you went to work building roads and things?
We went to work building roads and we built the
harbors and we did everything.
We built Admiral Nimitz's headquarters on Guam.
Oh, did you? Okay.
We put all that stuff of Nimitz's stuff on there.
I understand these headquarters are pretty nice
there, is that right?
They were not bad, yeah, for a combat area.
Yeah, okay.
Well, they made it as comfortable as possible anyway.
Yeah, okay.
So how long were you on Guam?
I was on Guam from then until the end of the
war, until the bomb went off and they started
sending us home.
No, I didn't have to go to Okinawa.
They were making the 6th Division when I left
and they were putting our people in it.
I know the 4th Marines was in the 6th Division
later on Okinawa.
They made the 6th Division over there.
Yeah, they put a bunch of-
Almost every one of the outfits I was in was
put in there.
Yeah, they put different ones together to make
the 6th Division.
All the raider regiments went in there. Right.
The 4th Marines and probably the 22nd Marines.
The 29th-
Right with the 22nd Marines.
They had to go out and take Orode Peninsula,
which was just not very far from where we landed.
They had to take that back to get their colors
back, but they lost them in 1941.
The 22nd Marines went there and we were with
the 4th Marines and the 4th Marines went straight
I went up over that big mountain and
everything, whatever you call it, the mountain,
the Big Hill.
I know the 29th Marines were in the 6th
Division also.
Yeah, I never had anything to do with them.
My father wrote me a letter that the 77th Army
Division had landed up the island somewhere,
up in Icahna, I guess.
We landed at Agathe. Our front was Agathe. The
other one was Ogana, which was the capital of Oman.
And the 77th went there and a couple of other
Marine divisions went there.
But my father had written me a letter that this
girl that worked where he had lived in New York
had her husband killed on Guam, and of course
he was buried there, and he wanted me to find him.
If there was any way I could find his grave and
take a picture of it and send it to him.
When I had the first conviction, I commanded an
officer to let somebody from whoever had
cameras that they would just do that to me.
He said, you find it and we'll take a picture
of it.
I went up to the grave commissioner's thing and
I gave the guy the name and sure enough
he pointed it out to me.
I went back and told the officer about it and
he said he called down and got a guy to
take a camera up there and take a picture of it
for me.
He did and I sent the picture and when I came
home, it was the damnedest coincidence of
the war that I could ever remember.
I was in a bar down in Baltimore and I was
sitting there and there was an army guy sitting
right next to me and I said were you ever in
the overseas and he said yeah I was in Guam.
I said you were in Guam?
He said yeah.
He said I was in the 77th division and I said
well I'll be damned.
I was in Guam and I remember and I told him
about this army guy who I never knew or anything
But I told him that I took his picture of his
grave and sent it to his wife
And he says he and when I told him the guy's
name. He said oh my god
He said you're not ever gonna believe what I
got to tell you
And I said one of these is he says ah he was in
my foxhole when he was killed. Hmm
Why I said you gotta be kidding me. No
Absolutely the truth. Huh? I
Could not believe it, but that's what he told
me. Yeah
I didn't know in any way in the world it could
be that small, you know.
Well, otherwise I did have a more or less
uneventful service with the cargo.
Well when you're in that band side charge,
that's not too uneventful.
Well not that short a period of time, no.
I would have dreaded going up and down those
streets in Europe and having to fight them
house to house, building to building, all that
we did.
We didn't have that, but down in Guadalcanal, I
can see where they would have had one hell
of a time, because you couldn't see five feet
in front of you, because the jungle was so
damn big.
Oh yeah, right. Yeah.
We had, down in Guadalcanal, we had a Japanese,
a Japanese would snuck into our chow line.
He was starving to death.
I guess he figured he'd just as soon
die and not get something to eat, because he sneaked
into our chow line one time, and they caught him.
I don't know what ever happened to him,
but they caught him in the chow line,
took him to the hospital the other day,
and I don't know what they did with him.
He was right on the chow line where they'd get
something to eat. Yeah.
I've heard of that happening, yeah.
Did he have an American uniform on?
I don't remember.
No, I don't remember that.
No, I don't remember whether he did that or not,
but at least they caught him.
He must not have impressed too well.
They wouldn't have grabbed him, I guess.
Okay, now you mentioned B-29s. Did you see
quite a few B-29s on Guam?
Oh yeah, when we were working on that field,
we'd go in the morning and they'd take off
with Japan. And they would come down that
runway, and that runway was about a mile long.
It was a really long runway. And we'd hear that
the time was done, gun them motors up
there, and he came charging down that runway,
and right at the end of the runway, if he
didn't get up off there, he went right in the
ocean, and stopped at the ocean, and he
would come down there and we were like, good
God, he ain't gonna pick it up.
He would finally get down there, the damn thing
looked like it was grown to get up off
that runway.
And they came, many of them guys came down
within a hell of twenty feet of that end of
that runway.
They were loaded with bombs and gas and when
they picked up that C-29, actually you could
almost see it springing.
How many airfields did they have on Guam?
They had that one and they had one on Orode Peninsula
where they had a small firing strip.
Okay, just one for B-29s then?
Just that one big one for B-29s, yeah.
Yeah, right. Okay.
Did you ever get to Saipan or Tinian?
Never did.
Except we watched the Battle of Saipan on the ship.
Yeah, right. Okay.
Other than that, we didn't go to shore on Guam.
We cut off the bottom half of the island, they
didn't go down there, and we were there.
We cut it off and the Japanese that were down
there, that's where, you know after the war
I'm sure there was a straggler who would come
up and give up, even a year after the war to
come up with.
I think 1974 was the last one.
Yeah, when we cut off the lower end of that
island, they just left them there.
They didn't make it bigger.
They weren't going to lose any more men going
down there.
We had them when we didn't need them, you know.
Yeah, right. Okay.
So they just isolated them. Yeah.
Did you have any typhoons when you were out there?
I had one when we were in Caledonia, there was
a typhoon that blew our tent down.
It was like the tent got knocked down.
Oh, okay.
We had to land.
It was a sewer ditch that we landed in.
Now, on Guam, did you get much food, or how was
the food there?
The food was good.
We had, of course, the first couple weeks
wasn't good.
All that kind of stuff, but we had damn good
cooks in that 53rd C.B.
Yeah, you were in the 53rd C.B.s there? Yeah.
Was that part of the Marines or just the Navy C.B .s?
That was the Navy C.B.s.
Did you still wear your Marine uniform there?
Well, I wore what I had.
By then, on Guadalcanal, I picked up my marine
uniform, and the day the legs fell off, I
had rotted.
Most of the time, by the time we went to Guam,
we were wearing whatever we got our hands on.
Most of the time, we cut the legs off and the
sleeves off the shirts.
Then when did you leave Guam to come back?
Left Guam on November 2, 1946.
Forty-six or forty-five? Forty-five.
Now you stayed there a long time after the war
was over then.
Yeah, we were up on Guam from July to November.
Yeah. Okay.
And during that time you were just building things?
Is that what you were doing or what were you
doing then?
time we built the airfields, we built the
Minnesota headquarters, we built all the roads,
we built blacktop roads all over the place.
Yeah, that's when we did all that.
Oh, yeah.
And what was the reaction?
Well, you know, I never was able to vote for him.
I didn't know anything about him much.
He was the only president most people had known.
Yeah, he was president all my life up to then.
Yeah, right.
On May the 8th, Germany surrendered. Did you
hear about that?
On May the 8th, what?
Germany surrendered.
We were glad that that happened.
I don't remember any.
Yeah, I was working and I was driving a truck
hauling silica out of a pit.
A guy came in and said,
they dropped a bomb on a city in Japan that
blew the whole damn city completely down.
And we said, you guys are fine.
We didn T believe it at all. Then when we got
back to our camp they were talking about
it there and it turned out to be the truth. We
just couldn t comprehend it. I couldn t
imagine anything that would blow the whole city
down. Then a couple days later or a week
later or something like that they did it again
and that s when they gave it up. Then we celebrated.
August 15th, you had a celebration then?
Yeah, we had a celebration then.
Our commanding officer, we had near beer to drink.
Oh, okay.
Whenever we got anything to drink, it was near beer.
Yeah, okay.
He opened up the thing and said,
you can drink every damn bit of it you want.
Okay, how was the morale in your outfit?
In our outfit?
Yes, Sir.
Okay. And what did you think of the officers
you had over you?
Some good, some bad.
We had to, if we wanted a fifth of whiskey, we
had to pay thirty-five bucks for a bottle of
PM, which was the cheapest whiskey made.
And I actually got caught with a fifth of PM
one time out on the road with another guy.
They found out that they wanted to find out who
the officers were that were doing this.
Our officer came up and told us, he said, ìYou
tell them guys anything, youíre going
to go back to that brig for a year.î He said,
ìHey, if anybody says anything about it,
we just say nothing.î I didnít want to spend
another minute, and that was one of the toughest
another minute and that was one of the toughest
things I ever put up with.
I was on there for a week.
We weren't sentenced to anything.
They just never, nobody knew where we went.
And they had us down as AWOL.
What the hell happened to us?
Well, we didn't have bad officers, really.
Occasionally you'd have them run into one that
was unanswered.
Otherwise, most of them were pretty damn good. No.
I had some, but I didn't take them home.
I had a flag.
I had a flag, and I had a rifle, and I had a
sword, but I sold them.
Over there.
ever seen the USO shows anywhere?
I saw them in California, in Hollywood.
Any big names?
Yeah. Randolph Scott was my Latino.
Other than that, and overseas they had,
they had Joey Brown came one time.
I don't remember whether it was on Glass and Al
or Guam,
But he came one time, and they say, but we
weren't in that,
but they said that Joey Brown had lost a son or something
in the war, and that he really went right up to the,
he wanted to have his show right smack up there
where the action was.
Oh, OK.
Did you have any experience with the Red Cross?
What, that? None.
Now, when you were there in that combat, what
did you think of the medics?
They were the greatest.
Did they work hard there?
They worked their ass off.
I think they were unsung heroes of the war.
Yeah, okay.
They were the greatest.
Did you ever hear Tokyo Rose on the radio?
I heard music and somebody, but I don't know
whether it was Tokyo Rose or not.
The only time I heard it was during the action
on the beach when we were there with the guns.
A guy with a tank came up, and he had a radio
in there, and that's where we heard it.
This is side two of tape one with Tom Erb.
Okay, I'm sorry, I missed part of that.
What was that coming down there?
We were sitting there listening to his radio
with him and they called him and told him
that there was a Japanese tank coming down the
main road and for him to get up there
and he had written on his tank, I'd do this, so
he said he had to cut everything off and
He said, I'll be back.
So he took off and he was gone for a while.
And then he comes back in this damn old tank,
rumbled up there, and he opened the hatch and
got out,
and he says, I did it.
OK, good.
What would you consider your most frightening time?
My most frightening time was night.
Every night was frightening to me.
But when you heard them giants and depths come
and looking for you, and you scared the hell
out of me,
because I just laid there in the damn foxhole
and shook.
Oh, okay.
When them shells would go boom, boom, boom,
like that, I'm thinking,
God damn it, this next one's coming right this old.
And what would you consider your worst day?
Worst day?
Yes, Sir.
It was the worst day of the day, we went ashore
on that one.
Yeah, okay.
Now, when you got out...
There was a strange thing about it.
As scary as that day was,
I wasn't a bit afraid.
Something took away the fear.
I was just not afraid. Good.
I could not imagine what the hell it was, but
I was scared I'd crap in my pants or something,
but I just was not afraid.
I often wonder about these guys in Gettysburg,
how in the hell could they have walked across
that big field over here
with all them god darn guns going off right in
their face and just keep right on walking.
And I thought of that. I've thought of that
ever since.
And I thought, now I know why they could do it,
because something takes that fear away
from me.
It did for me anyway.
I was discharged on March 2, 1946.
When did you get out?
Did you have any trouble adjusting to civilian life?
I was discharged on March 2, 1946.
When did you get out?
I was discharged on March 2, 1946.
When did you get out?
I was discharged on March 2, 1946.
When did you get out?
I was discharged on March 2, 1946.
When did you get out?
I was discharged on March 2, 1946.
When did you get out?
I was discharged on March 2, 1946.
When did you get out?
I was discharged on March 2, 1946.
When did you get out?
I was discharged on March 2, 1946.
When did you get out?
Now, when you came back from overseas until
March, what did you do during that time?
I just went out and got drunk and messed around
doing any old damn thing I felt like doing.
I mean, when you were still in the service.
Oh, when I was still in the service?
Yeah, from the time you came back overseas.
That was a bad time for me.
had the points to get out, and we got home in
November of 1945. From November to March,
we had a month of December, January, and
February, three months. I had the points to get out,
and I had a commanding officer in Washington, D.C
. They put me on a tugboat in the Anacosta
river and this guy didn't want to let me go
because I was the only guy he had around there
that could start the engine and stop it in that
damn tugboat.
He would take my request for separation, if you
had a request to be separated, I would
take it in to him and he would take that damn
thing and tear it in half and drop it right
in front of me. I did that from January,
February, December, January, and February. And finally
I told my mother, you're going to have to try
to get me out of here
somehow or another because this son of a bitch
is never going to turn me loose. So she went
down to Senator Ratcliffe or somebody in
Maryland and told him what the problem was and
I had
the points and I'd had them for months and
months and I couldn't get past this commanding
officer in that position. So he wrote down
there and they had to, the next time I took
this thing in and handed it to the officer, he
said, you must know somebody. And I said,
why? He said, now I've got to let you go and
hand me the paper. I said, get on the train
and go on up to Bainbridge, Maryland and get
this done.
You were in the Washington, D.C. area, huh?
Yeah, they sent me down there and they have a
Navy gun factory or something down there
and I ran up and down the bay with that tugboat
from there and that's where they had me.
Now when you were discharged, were you
discharged from the Marines or the Navy or
Seabees or
Yeah, I was discharged.
Well, now I'm in the Navy, back in the Navy, so
I got discharged from the Navy.
So you went Navy, Seabees, Marines, back to the
Navy, huh? Yes.
Let's see here.
Have you had any reunions? Reunions?
I've had a lot of them, yeah.
Have you?
Of what group?
The Seabees.
The Seabees? Yeah.
That 53rd Seabees?
What's that?
The 53rd Seabees? Yeah.
What's that?
The 53rd Seabees? Yeah.
And do you see a lot of people you know there? No.
I don't think I've ever seen anybody that I knew.
Because I wasn't with them. Yeah.
You know?
But you go to those reunions though, huh?
I go to the reunions, but I don't know anybody
there that I knew back in the service.
When was the last one you went to?
I can't remember when it was, but it's been
about two or three years since I've been away.
They have it every year, but they're getting
lesser and lesser and lesser, so they couldn't
find anybody to do all the work it takes to do
that, so they just had to quit.
So when you were in Branson, you were not at a
reunion then? No.
We've been to a union in Branson years ago. Yeah.
What was the highest rank you got to?
I got to machinist mate third class.
Machinist mate third class.
You never did cross the equator, did you? Yeah.
You crossed the equator?
Oh yeah, going to Guadalcanal.
down to New Caledonia. When you crossed the
equator, did they have any kind of a ceremony
or anything?
They had a ceremony. That was the wildest thing
I've ever been to. There's just never
been anything like that before.
What happened?
Holy mackerel.
What did they do? Huh?
What all did they do?
Oh, man, they shaved you. They make you go up
to King Neptune who was such an hero. And
And he's got this great big dog, you've got to
go down and kiss that, and everybody that's
been through there has to, he rolls up a knot
in the end of a towel and stands in line and
when you go through that, if you were the last
one coming through, you got beat by everybody
in the whole damn ship, but if you were lucky
enough to be up in the front of the line,
you only got beat by a very damn few.
I think I was on there, but I'm happy to tell
you that was some kind of tough thing.
They cut your hair, and then they painted it yellow.
They take the American flag down and run the
pirate flag up.
Anything else you recall from your time in
World War II?
The ship, we were beached right there on the
beach at Guadalcanal.
We went in on one of them one day, swam into
one of them one day and was looking around
and there was a damn octopus in there.
We got out of there and never went back.
How big was he?
He looked like he was-the body part of him was
about as big as I was anyway.
Oh my gosh.
He was big then.
He was a big octopus.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, there was those two ships that the
Japanese beached down there. Yeah.
Well, where they beached them, the ships were
almost right where our camp was.
I see. Yeah.
I had to take a medicine called a tincture of
opium and on the bottle it says opium and
I told my wife, I said if you think I'm going
to Nagasaki and go in that line and get on
that plane and one of them see that word opium,
it's going in the can and I'll show my father
My father was in World War I and then he joined
the army in World War II and he was on a ship
the whole time.
Then my sister joined the WACs and of course I
was in the Navy and the Marines and my mother
He got in a luncheon, not doing anything, doing
the Red Cross and the Civil Defense Corps.
What did your father do in World War II?
In World War II he was on a ship, a troop ship,
and he was at all those islands down there.
They were hauling troops, and he hauled troops
to Europe.
It was called the George Goethals.
Was he in the Navy or in the Merchant Marine?
No, he was in the Army.
He said the Army has more ships than the Navy.
Oh, okay.
Now, he isn't still living, is he?
No, he died.
Yeah, okay.
That's interesting, yeah.
Your whole family was involved in World War II then.
Every one of us, yeah.
Yeah, right.
Tom, thanks again for your time today
and for your service to our country.
Okay, Richard, and thank you for calling.
Okay, we'll talk to you later then.
Okay, bye now.
And this is the end of this tape.